This one i enjoyed and thank you for sharing it. The stars in the back ground with the blast of colours the green really stands out, also the one tree in the left hand corner, i like that a lot of people leave that one tree out but you didn't, the hill i like also i can see the lovely reflections in the water as colour and shows it all in the water, the cloud brings it out also dark and stormy look. Pleas keep up with your great work well done. I love colour in photos and this is what you had done.

I made it yesterday but i could not send messages to inform you, i donīt know whatīs wrong with DA but sometimes it does not work. BTW you are very welcome. PS: One more question, what do you do to get the milky way better out? PS?

I prefer using Lightroom to enhance the milky way to begin with, since Lightroom is kinder to the pixels in the capture. So I enhance the milky way itself with exposure, clarity etc and reduce the exposure, add darkness to the surrounding parts. Also known as brushing.

There is an online tool for predicting aurora. It is satellite data graph showing solar CME activity in near-real time, which gives about a day (depends on CME energy) of early warning, sometimes hours.

Here is the latest data for comparison, October 19 (with nothing to show yet):[link]

Unfortunately, the URL is static, so one has to type the date in the following format: YYYYMMDD. Also the text is not in English, but there are only three important letters to watch there: X, M and C - each for a CME class. The show starts with excursions into M area, and lights are fully on in the X area. Perhaps there is a more convenient tool out there, but this one is effective in predicting aurora.

There are also ULF magnetometer graphs, but they show athmospheric disturbances in real time, when plasma is already here. Still, they may give a few hours warning for the following night. Also these are dynamic links, hence can be bookmarked and auto-refreshed. There are three graphs for X, Y and Z axes. An arrival of a good flare here shows as a thick vertical band of noise:[link][link][link]

In my observation, it is usually "hours". The exact time depends on flare's energy and any number of other variables that are beyond my limited knowledge of astrophysics. But the basic idea is simple. Satellites detect solar flares optically. Solar light travels to Terra in about 8 minutes. But solar plasma that creates aurorae is much slower. The time difference between arrival of light and plasma is your lead time. A powerful flare (that you are most interested in) can accelerate particles (mostly protons) to enegries up to 10MeV, which translates to a proton speed of about six times slower than light. In that case, assuming real-time satellite data feed, you would get a lead time of about an hour. If proton energy is 1MeV, it is about three hours; 0.1MeV -- nine hours. But flares last for hours sometimes, and magnetic disturbances they create can last for a day or more. And the time required for plasma to actually create an aurora is unknown to me -- it has to travel along magnetic field lines to polar regions. So in the end, with all the known and unknown unknowns, in practical terms, you will get "hours" before plasma arrival. For example, in daytime you would know that the following night a light show is in order, and prepare. Also, due to ballistics, not every solar flare hits Terra.

So, let's look at a real event of March 9, 2012 -- a large magnetic disturbance: [link]Time (UTC): ~09:00

And here is the X-ray flash reported by satellite: [link]Time (UTC+4): ~07:30, or about UTC 04:30, which would give a warning of 4~5 hours. But the magnetic disturbance lasted until about UTC 15:00

Oh, here is NASA to help with X-ray flash detection. They have a page with current space weather conditions, even with a forecast and email alerts: [link]And here is their fastest (1 minute) dynamic satellite data graph of X-ray flux, which is used to detect and scale solar flares (note the X-M-C-.. letter flare scale on the right): [link]

It's a whole science this aurorachasing, I've been following spaceweather.com and several of the norwegian radar/weather stations However it could burst as much as it wants for all I can do about it. We've had overcast and rain for the last week

It has to do with the intensity of the northernlights. If you want to capture the purpleish color it needs to have somewhat of a flare to it. And even at "short" shutterspeeds you'll get alot of purple due to the fast movement in the waves

I'm sure these things would be more obvious if I had ever actually seen them... sigh.... If you'll allow another ignorant question... how often do you get to see them in a normal year (ie, not solar maximum). You've clearly not lost any enthusiasm for seeing them, so it just made me curious.

It's a good question really, I've only been photographing for a little over a year, so I'm not sure how the northernlights act when it's not solarmaximum, but I'm sure there is some sort of activity anyways